Shields up! Force fields could protect Mars missions

Interplanetary adventurers must contend with deadly solar radiation – but the moon's magnetic memories may hold the key to safe space flight

BORED on their six-month journey to Mars? Not a bit of it. Whenever the astronauts look out of the window, they find themselves mesmerised by the glowing, shimmering sphere of plasma that surrounds their spacecraft. Hard to believe that the modest electromagnet at the heart of their ship can produce something so beautiful.

Not that the magnet's raison d'être is aesthetic, of course. Its main function is to keep the astronauts from a slow, horrible death by radiation sickness.

NASA is nervous about sending astronauts to Mars - and understandably so. Six months' exposure to the wind of high-energy particles streaming from the sun could indeed prove deadly. But a team of researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) near Oxford, UK, has hit upon a ...

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